Commissioners Establish 911 Committee
Geauga County Commissioner Ralph Spidalieri, Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand and Bainbridge Township Trustee Jeff Markley are the faces of a new three-member 911 Program Review Committee.
Geauga County Commissioner Ralph Spidalieri, Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand and Bainbridge Township Trustee Jeff Markley are the faces of a new three-member 911 Program Review Committee.
“This is the first step to a statewide initiative for Next Generation 911,” Hildenbrand said during Geauga County Commissioners’ Feb. 22 regular meeting. “It is supposed to enhance the 911 capabilities so that people can transfer calls and stuff like that (more easily).”
According to section 128 of the Ohio Revised Code, every county in Ohio must maintain a 911 program review committee and have a final plan for implementing and operating a countywide 911 system.
The law says committees will submit a report to the political subdivisions within the county by March 1 each year that details the sources and amounts of revenue spent to support — as well as all costs incurred by operating — the countywide 911 system.
“We have been working on the plan for years,” Hildenbrand said. “It’s pretty much the same plan in most counties. I just look forward to moving on to the next step.”
Markley expressed how serious he will take his role on the committee and said 911 is a system everyone uses.
“All I know is what we’ve done in the past, and the systems we’ve used in moving our own dispatch to the county dispatch and the county 911,” Markley said. “I’m going to be offering that perspective as someone familiar with the private dispatch, township-based and then the county-based dispatch and we will see how I can contribute.”
Spidalieri highlighted his experience as chief deputy at the Portage County Sheriff’s Office as his motive for joining the committee.
“I’m very much engaged in those conversations daily and I understand the whole situation with the communication towers, the need for the correct equipment, the correct time frames that we want to have for response and calls and all that,” Spidalieri said. “(I plan) to put that all together and just be able to bring my experience to the table.”
Spidalieri said he looks forward to looking over the plan and sitting down to discuss where Geauga County is today and where Geauga County wants to be three years, five years and 10 years from now.
“The other thing is going to be communicating about the possibility of some towers because on the southeast part of the county, there are some dead zones that are not easily picked up. We’re experiencing it in Portage County and I know that Geauga is experiencing it here because we work off of the same towers,” Spidalieri said. “Those towers are critical for the communication to be networked back and forth.”
